


This Is Surely Not A Lie

by PFDiva



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Season: Marielda, Season: Spring in Hieron, Season: Winter in Hieron, but not really, dream fic, maelgwyn and the six are sorta in this, other folks are standing as allegories for them, this is a weird dream fic fucking fight me okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PFDiva/pseuds/PFDiva
Summary: Rosana dreams of her husband during winter in The Last University.





	This Is Surely Not A Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Rosana is dreaming for 90% of this story, so it's a lot of dream logic. Beware. Title is from Jhameel's song White Lie.

A gentle hand caressed Rosana's face, causing her to roll over in bed and look up. The man standing over her was lean and blond and pale-skinned, the most beautiful person she'd ever seen. In the way of dreams, she knew he was meant to be her husband, and she smiled.

"Hadrian, you're back."

"Samothes," the man replied, and Rosana understood him to be addressing her, "You're the one who left. Not me."

Rosana found herself standing at the pulpit in the Church of Samothes in Velas, sunlight shining bright through the windows. Even in her dream, she couldn't help but bask in the unaccustomed heat. The Last University was always so cold, and it felt like the snow would never stop. But this place was warm, no sign of snow in sight.

When she looked down to resume work, she saw Benjamin at the far end of the church. Not Benjamin as he was now: a gangly 15 year-old with hands and feet yet too big for him. Benjamin as an adult. Not a warrior, like his father, but a magic-user, with a book in hand and Blue Jay at his side, accompanied by Chatterchin, Ephrim, Throndir, and Red Jack.

All were visibly attempting to dissuade Benjamin from his course of action, but Rosana's concern was that he was using the wrong book. She hurriedly bent to the one she had been writing for him. She knew what Hadrian had sent him to do, but if he used the book she was working on, she wouldn't be taken away from the blond man that was and was not her husband. She just had a few more lines to write, and it would be done.

She finished the book, looking up just in time to see Benjamin point at her over the heads of the people trying to stop him. Black electricity crackled from the book through his hand and into her chest, puncturing a hole through her body.

Then she was outside of her body, watching it fall down the stairs from the pulpit, watching her own blood ooze down the stairs into her hair. She also had the chance to see Benjamin's companions arguing amongst themselves and with him. Between one breath and the next, she saw herself at the pulpit, preaching to the congregation. The only reason she knew it wasn't her was because Blue Jay stood by as guard, eyes glassy with anguish, staring off into the middle distance.

And then Rosana was in a city with few people at first, then increasingly more, taking care of them, looking after them, building them a home. After a very, very long time, Emmanuel came to her, but much in the way of dreams, he was also Hadrian. Only because he was also Emmanuel, he wasn't her husband and she didn't love him as her husband. She loved him as someone who looked up to her, someone who had touched and spoken with her husband, a thing she had not been able to do for so long.

She looked at herself in a mirror and she wasn't herself. She was Samothes, looking at herself in exhaustion. Outside of her body again, Rosana watched Samothes have dinner with Hadrian, who stopped being Emmanuel and went back to being her husband. Other attendees included Hella Varal, an orc who might have been Lem King, and the mapmaker whose name escaped Rosana in the dream.

Another twist of the dream and Rosana watched Samothes make love to Hadrian. He was gentle and kind, as Hadrian deserved, and she felt her own thoughts assert themselves. Hadrian had loved Samothes far longer and more deeply than he could ever love her, and her heart swelled with joy and pleasure for him. Hadrian had earned this good treatment. He shouldn't have had to earn it, but he well deserved it.

"You're far more generous than I," the blond man who wasn't her husband said, moving to stand next to her. She understood that Samothes was his husband and he was jealous of Hadrian, for many reasons.

"How could I begrudge him this happiness?" Rosana asked. "He has loved Samothes for so long, and has never been treated as well as he deserved. I want him to feel everything good, even if he feels some good things with someone else. I trust him to come back to me when he can."

Hadrian gasped, in that way he did when his orgasm was close, and Rosana watched him reach the heights of ecstasy, Samothes following quickly after him.

When they lay curled together, Rosana moved to sit beside Hadrian, caressing his face and delighting in the way he instinctively turned into her touch. He looked shocked a moment later to realize that it was her, and made an abortive motion to pull away from his lover.

"Shh," she soothed, "When has sharing you with another made you any less mine?"

"Never," he answered, reaching up for her. She went, giving him a small, chaste kiss before lifting her gaze to look at Samothes, whose eyes darted between her and his husband standing behind her.

"I've brought someone to see you," Rosana said, knowing it was true as the words came from her mouth, "To thank you for taking such good care of my husband these past few years."

"I've done my best," Samothes said, looking exclusively at his own husband now, "I've always done my best."

Rosana occupied the same space as Samothes' husband, looking at herself curled over Hadrian, looking at Samothes staring at the her that was his husband. "I know," she said with the voice of the man whose body she currently shared, "So have I."

_I have to go to the outhouse._

The thought occurred to her after the urge had already driven her from bed. She did her business, then her morning ablutions. It was only after Rosana had made breakfast for herself and Benjamin, as she was shivering through the halls of the Last University towards the class she was teaching, that she thought about the fading wisps of her dream.

She remembered writing in a book in the Velasian church, the sense of urgency to it, the faintest hint of Hadrian's ecstatic face as he reached orgasm. She missed him so much. She wondered what progress Sunder and Uklan were having with the sword that he and his friends were trapped within. She might have to ask later today.

Then she shook off the dream and continued her day, unaware of the role she and Hadrian had played in allowing a pair of gods the chance to see each other, if only for a moment.


End file.
